You look at your bank account or monthly sales report online and think, “Oh crap! I better get some customers in the door!”

So off you go on a frantic, frenzied pace focused on getting new customers and pushing the numbers up. Phew! Then you go to work fulfilling on what you just sold and sit back until the next time (a month, 2 months, 3 months from now) when the sales curve dips again.

Then it’s back on the treadmill again…

It’s this inconsistent roller coaster of sales that drives you crazy, right? And that’s exactly, I want to share with you a new resource that can help you (and/or your sales team) fill your pipelines with qualified sales opportunities so you feel confident the numbers are always growing and improving.

And to dig into this I interviewed my friend, Aaron Ross. Aaron has designed a step-by-step framework that liberates you from the anxiety you may experience when faced with generating new business, building your sales pipelines or launching a new business-to-business product. Best of all, this framework is scalable (can grow as you want it to grow), and predictable (reliable, foreseeable, calculable) without cold calling!

This process was conceived and developed by Aaron at one of the most successful startup companies in California – salesforce.com. In a few short years, use of this process helped increase Salesforce.com’s recurring revenues by $100 million.

Listen in (see audio playback below!) as I get Aaron to cover:

• The Seven Fatal Sales Mistakes Entrepreneurs and Sales VPs (even experienced ones) make time and time again.

• How sales and selling can be friendly, helpful and enjoyable without cold calls or a marketing budget.

• How an outbound sales process, without cold calls or a marketing budget, can generate a 9% response rate and millions of dollars from cold prospects.

• How to develop self-managing sales teams, turning your employees into mini-CEOs and much more.

Note: There’s nothing on the call to buy, but I’ll be recommending Aaron’s new book “Predictable Revenue: Triple Your Results With The $100 Million Best Practices of Salesforce.com”

About Aaron Ross:
After years in venture capital and the corporate world, Aaron Ross created PebbleStorm, which is helping create a community of100 million people “make money through enjoyment,” based on values like trust, integrity and authenticity. He teaches people how to discover their Unique Genius while starting a fulfilling business that can’t fail (www.UniqueGenius.com). Aaron’s a serial entrepreneur and the author of two books, the Amazon bestseller Predictable Revenue, and CEOFlow: Turn Your Employees Into Mini-CEOs. He is also the cofounder of Predictable Revenue, Inc., which helps companies multiply sales (www.PredictableRevenue.com).

Working on a new book for Entrepreneur Press called Maverick Startup: 11 X-factors to bootstrap from zero to 6-figures (and beyond)

I think it’ll be coming out early next year. The publisher and I are using crowdsourcing to design the new cover. (btw – if you haven’t tried 99Designs.com you should consider them. I’ve used them on a lot of projects and always pleased.) We had the founder, Matt Mickiewicz, at a previous Underground – he was incredible.

If you could take 1 minute and cast your vote – I’d appreciate it. And if you leave a comment here (after you’ve voted) – I’ll randomly choose 3 of you guys to get an autographed copy of the book when it comes out.

(Note: I don’t know if the publisher will be going with the final voting on here but it’ll help with direction.)

**** Update 3/15/12 ****

The publisher ended up going a different direction but the voting helped to see what you guys liked. The book is coming out April 1 – pre-orders are available now.

Here’s what the new book looks like:

And for the autographed copies, the winners are Noah, Sybil and Edmund. Thanks everyone!

]]>http://www.internetlifestyle.com/blog/start-up/quick-vote-maverick-startup-book/feed/9An Open Letter to Anyone Ready to ‘Quit’ the Internet….http://www.internetlifestyle.com/blog/marketing-o-rama/open-letter-ready-quit-internet/
http://www.internetlifestyle.com/blog/marketing-o-rama/open-letter-ready-quit-internet/#commentsMon, 03 Oct 2011 18:14:15 +0000http://www.internetlifestyle.com/blog/?p=1528If you’ve just about given up on the idea that you can create a product that sells – this is for you. Let me share a quick story with you that you might relate to… My personal trainer, Jeff, and I have been working out for 10+ years. In that time he’s seen me build my online businesses and develop quite a few hot-selling product in several marketplaces. In fact, way back in 2001 or 2002 we actually co-developed a product called “Get Fit While You Sit”. I had the idea that there could be something for people sitting at their desks or watching TV and he created the workout programs to fit. It wasn’t a barnburner but it made some steady checks for several years. I’d always told him he should create his own products and Jeff finally agreed. He started with a workout program for brides to get them into shape before there wedding. I liked it. It was a good niche market with a strong desire for the product. Well Jeff did what so many would-be product creators do – he spent countless hours developing the content, filming it and just making it perfect. Then he purchased a small run of DVDs to have on hand ready to ship. By this time he’s probably out a few thousand dollars and who knows how much time – but the product is done and he’s excited. Now comes the moment of truth, he rented a small exhibit at a regional bridal expo and sold like 2 or 3 copies of his DVDs that weekend. Bummer! I mean there’s nothing more deflating that putting in a crap-load of hours and then realizing the marketplace might not be there for what you’ve created! Ouch! It took about 1 year and a half after that disappointment to wear off and for him to listen to my badgering to try again with another product. This time I helped him develop the angle of a real “hard-core” trainer giving people no excuses to get into shape. Again, he spent a whole lot of time pulling together new exercises together, putting up a site and pounding out a video sales letter. Jeff went online to sell it and started getting a few sales to keep his interest up — but not enough to be profitable based on his traffic costs. So this project fizzled too and now he’s pretty much sworn off creating products or selling online. I can see where he’s coming from and I know so many others might be in the same boat. I hate to see talented people with a lot of insight, knowledge and passion to share get discouraged and ‘give up’. I think about all the people that could be helped by them but never would be. Personally, I have about a 2 out of 10 track record. Out of every 10 “good ideas” I have about 2 of them are really nice winners. But the only way to ever figure that out is get them into the marketplace. And usually this involves a whole lot of work – until now… That’s why I’m so excited with this new business models that turns all of this on its head. It gives you the ability to get paid before you spending the time in product development. And having that cash gives you the energy, motivation and confidence to know you’ve got something! I call it the “Cash on Tap” System and it’s a totally new way to harness the power of the marketplace to get paid before you spin your wheels working on a product that may or may not fly. And the cool thing is it totally works even if you’re starting from a complete standstill as a complete “unknown”. Is this the ultimate ‘no-fail’ business model? I’ve given this a lot of thought and have been interested in why some people succeed and others do not. On the surface two people might have similar backgrounds, education, support and resources at their disposal but they have totally different results. What makes the difference? It probably doesn’t come down to just one thing but if I had to really narrow it down – I come to the conclusion its about getting a positive “response” back to what you put out. Here’s what I mean. Let’s say you decide to blog and you realize you’ve got to build an audience so you keep blogging and blogging but the site is pretty much a ghost town. You’re lucky if you get 1 or 2 comments for every third post. And it doesn’t take too long before you’re pretty darn discouraged putting out your best ideas and insights with nobody responding. Or maybe you decide to run some ads for an affiliate product but don’t get a “response” with anyone buying right away – it’s extremely frustrating as you keep spending and spending. Or, maybe you go full bore and create a product. You could easily spend hours writing your ebook, pounding out a sales letter, setting up the payment processor, hooking up the autoresponder, adding analytics, testing, etc. And then after all that work maybe you only sell a handful (and one of them was to a relative who rhymes with “Tom”). Ugh! Pretty disappointing, right? That’s why I say its the response that gets us excited to keeps us going, creating, producing and growing our business. When you’re hearing from customers about how you’re changing their lives and the cash is rolling in you create the momentum to keep building on your vision for the future. Unfortunately too many people never get there because most things we try are not going to work. (Remember I said I was at about a 2 out of 10 track record.) But what if there was a way to almost eliminate almost all the risk of having a failure before you spent too much time or got too deep into any project? And then let’s take it one step further — imagine how empowering and exciting it would be get paid *before* you even created your next product. Now that’s pretty awesome! There’s nothing more motivating or empowering than to have a stranger pay you for one of your ideas. It gives you the rocket fuel you need to have the confidence there’s a market for your product. (The cool thing you can pretty much put this together in a weekend with a few bucks and it doesn’t matter if you’re a total “unknown”.) Unless you’re seeing results it gets harder and harder for your spouse, partner or family to stay in your corner. I’ll be doing a special webinar covering this topic on Wednesday, October 5th at 12pm ET. There are a limited amount of spots so you can sign up here: I hope you can make it for this LIVE presentation. (And I’d love to hear your comments on what effect seeing a response means to you.) [Update: The Webinar link sign-up is fixed now]
]]>http://www.internetlifestyle.com/blog/marketing-o-rama/open-letter-ready-quit-internet/feed/11How to Cash in on Events and Breaking Newshttp://www.internetlifestyle.com/blog/marketing-o-rama/cashin-onbreaking-news/
http://www.internetlifestyle.com/blog/marketing-o-rama/cashin-onbreaking-news/#commentsWed, 24 Aug 2011 14:02:15 +0000http://www.internetlifestyle.com/blog/?p=1515As smart marketers we have to ensure our customers are always excited about “What’s next?” and creating that feeling of fun anticipation. An easy way to stop being boring is to use out-of-the-norm events for your marketing. A lot of people might do sales or events based on typical calendar dates like Christmas or New Years but I doubt many of us do ‘Flag Day’ sales, right?

Take a look at this example from a few weeks ago:

Betabrands is a somewhat quirky brand that started with ‘cordaround’ pants. (Those are corduroy pants that are horizontal instead of vertical.) So for Flag Day they piggybacked perfectly on the theme by offering 17.76% off their red, white and blue products. (Get it?)

Pretty smart and clever.

Here’s a great example from OoVoo.com, which does group online video chat and competes against Skype in some aspects.

The offer is extremely time sensitive with Skype being ‘down’ (which I didn’t even know until they sent it). The deal is a free day of OoVoo.com for every hour Skpe is down – pretty smart.

With our 24/7 society and constant stream of media attention on breaking news – you should be fleet of foot and click to capitalize on these events for your business.

]]>http://www.internetlifestyle.com/blog/marketing-o-rama/cashin-onbreaking-news/feed/2Lessons from the 4th of July Maverick Family Freedom Celebrationhttp://www.internetlifestyle.com/blog/start-up/4th-july-illegal-entrepreneurship-firework-explosions-families/
http://www.internetlifestyle.com/blog/start-up/4th-july-illegal-entrepreneurship-firework-explosions-families/#commentsSun, 17 Jul 2011 15:20:17 +0000http://www.internetlifestyle.com/blog/?p=1493Just back from Park City, UT for the first-ever Maverick Family Freedom event held over July 4th weekend. It’s the first time ever Maverick families came together for a long weekend combining totally unique experiences and activities with business sessions for the children and development sessions for the parents.

Not only did we have the children (ages 6-19) learn about business but they actually participated in running different ventures. There were 2 product businesses selling July 4th related products and one service business selling photos with Uncle Sam and Lady Liberty.

They were given blueprints like this:

Then they were provided the cost of inventory and had to figure out how to package and sell their product or service to make a profit. And on July 4th they hit the streets selling to the crowds gathering for their famous 4th of July Parade with over 70 floats.

It was great seeing how creative and excited the kids were before July 4th as they planned out bonuses, pricing, created their signs, etc. Check out a few of these pictures of the kids prepping the day before the parade:

Here you can see Team #3 (the Noise Maker team) getting their packing together. They were bundling up noisemaker sticks with clappers and a tattoo all for one price. Smart.

I wasn’t sure how Zack would do in this setting. Missy thought he was too little (he’ll be 6 in Aug) and I was borderline on it. But I wanted him to sit in the sessions to see. He actually really enjoyed it. In fact, we play a little ‘game’ each night where I ask the kids about their 3 favorite things for the day. (It puts them into a positive state of mind and builds confidence.) Well, his #1 favorite thing that he shouted was “Learning about business!”

So that was pretty cool. Hannah, one of the older girls really helped him and designed his sign with him so he was ready to go:

I’ve got his first sale right here:

Zack making his first sale

It was really exciting to see the kids gain confidence as they started to make sales on July 4th. And lots of them were antsy to get back to selling right after the parade and after lunch. It was awesome to see how engaged they were.

Even back in the hotel when Zoe was asking Zack for a glow necklace, he refused. I stepped in and asked if I could buy it. He said sure for $2. I guess I’m creating a mini-capitalist here. I’m really proud of small ‘ripples’ like this that might have started from the event. Everything from sparks of entrepreneurship to new friendships developed by the children there. One of the parents of an 8-year old said she wasn’t sure her child ever felt out of place in her “regular” school but she instantly bonded with other kids here because they were all the same. Even our sole 19 year old on the trip, “Critter”, said he got along great with the other kids because of the same reason.

Quite frankly there were a lot of lessons adults could learn from the kids. Everything from creating packages to giving customers a choice to two items to buy instead of just asking for a yes/no sale. Plus, they learned about getting attention (some of the costumes) and advertising (signage). Wouldn’t you want to get a photo taken with this crew?

Now it wasn’t all work here especially since the Maverick philosophy is about creating unique experiences & memories. The families spent time at Olympic Park with the Summer Comet Bobsled pulling nearly 4G’s, the Alpine slide and Zipline.

Here are a few of Mavericks getting ready to shoot down the bobsled track:

And Mommy and Zoe taking on the Alpine slide:

Some of the best feedback was from the kids themselves who called this their best vacation ever! But my favorite,might have to be from Sten Schmidt, who told his Dad,

“Mr. Silver is cool!”

I couldn’t have said it any better!

From the kind of response we got from parents (and kids) we’re going to do it again next July 4th, probably in Park City, UT again. So make sure you let us know if you want to be part of it or just sign up at MaverickBusinessAdventures.com to stay up to date.

Now if you’re a parent and wanted to work with your children – I have a couple resources for you from the special guests who were here and others who contributed.

This Tuesday, July 19th, I’m conducting a free Teleseminar with Richard Eyre, author of the #1 Best-seller “Teaching Children Values” and the upcoming “Entitlement Trap” book…

One of the highlights for parents was an intimate session with best-selling author, Richard Eyre discussing the ‘Entitlement Trap’. It was so well received that I asked Richard to present to other parents in our network to share his wisdom in the upcoming book by the same name. (Note: You can pre-order it on his site)

Secondly, we had the winner of the 2010 Financial Educator of the Year, Elisabeth Donati, coming in to work with the parents and children. Elisabeth is the founder of Camp Millionaire and the Money Game. She played a shortened version of the Money Game with the kids having them physically go around the room collecting their earnings and paying bills. Then the game got more interesting when they were able to buy assets like real estate or businesses. That’s when they internalized the lessons of getting paid without a correlation to the number of hours worked. It’s an excellent way to make it fun to teach your children valuable entrepreneurial skills. She now sells the game separate and its worth picking up for your family or gather a group of families together to play. Definitely check it out!

Finally one more resource, Amanda van der Gulik, author of “Teach your child about money” has 7 gifts for inspired parents. Amanda wasn’t able to make it out to Park City but she provided Mavericks several additional resources and she said I could share with our InternetLifestyle blog readers too. Everything from 50 money making ideas for kids to her 6 magic piggy bank system and the ‘Allowance Secrets’ report written the top 25 ‘Kids and Money’ Experts from around the world! BTW – Amanda is pretty ‘excited’ on her welcome video

]]>http://www.internetlifestyle.com/blog/start-up/4th-july-illegal-entrepreneurship-firework-explosions-families/feed/7‘Work the System’ flash interview with Sam Carpenterhttp://www.internetlifestyle.com/blog/resources-and-tools/workthesystem/
http://www.internetlifestyle.com/blog/resources-and-tools/workthesystem/#commentsTue, 21 Jun 2011 01:18:41 +0000http://www.internetlifestyle.com/blog/?p=1486I spent the morning with Sam Carpenter, author of “Work the System“. It’s a book I was exposed to by one of our Maverick1000 members on our South Africa World Cup Expedition. I’ve read Michael Gerber’s E-Myth book and loved the point of working ‘on your business not in your business’ but there was never really an explanation on how to do just that. Sam’s material was the first resource that actually made me feel like I could create more stream-lined systems out of our operations. Check out this quick 20-minute of Sam and I hanging out in my library and let me know what you think by leaving a comment… then do yourself a favor and buy his book.

Team Maverick winning the NFTE Ignite Spring Break challenge

A few weeks ago I spent the week working with students from the local DC-area NFTE group. (NFTE is the National Federation for Teaching Entrepreneurship). These high school students had given up their Spring Break in order to help consult me and 2 other entrepreneurs on our business challenges.

The challenge I laid out for them was around our stalled Maverick1Million.org platform for young entrepreneurs. I got a lot of great advice from Sabera, Ivonne, Dion, Autumn, Kalan, Nytiah, Shahara and Percell (thanks guys!) and now I want to take it the next level with others engaged on this project.

And now I’m excited to have our new superstar intern, Adam, who is going to be commandeering this project so the time is right to throw this out again and build the 2.0 version of the site.

I’m asking for help for feedback on the project and potential volunteers that want to be involved. But first let me give you a snapshot of what would be included (as of today):

2020 Goal: 1,000,000 Young entrepreneurs, between the ages of 13-23, impacted, engaged and inspired to create or enhance their own business start-up.

Maverick1Million.org is a FREE multi-media platform for online learning, virtual mentoring, community, funding and idea incubation for young entrepreneurs. It consists of the following sections:

Maverick Business Blueprints - Step-by-step advice from fellow young entrepreneur Maverick1Million members detailing how to start a particular business. (i.e. everything from a lawn care service, baby sitting business to an iPhone app)

Maverick Upstart Platform – This allows young entrepreneurs to showcase their ideas to compete for seed capital through crowdsourced funding. Young entrepreneurs can choose to make their ideas public for wider funding or just private for Maverick1000 members to see, fund and virtually mentor them.

Maverick Idea Incubator – Maverick1000 members and other successful entrepreneur mentors have many business ideas that are not the right fit for their current ventures for numerous reasons. But instead of letting these ideas lay dormant they can be uploaded into the Idea Incubator so young entrepreneurs can then develop them. The affinity for the original ideas would drives one-on-one virtual mentoring and possibly even a full pledged partnership as agreed on by both parties.

Maverick Q&A – Threaded questions and answers that voted up/down for usefulness about all aspects of business. Becomes a reference guide and living learning tool. (Quora.com or Stackoverflow.com are 2 good examples.)

Why am I building this?
You might be wondering why am I doing all of this? Quite frankly, I believe entrepreneurship is the driving force for innovation, change and value creation in our world. And right now is that incredible golden area where you can start something small and see what happens.

I’ve been incredibly encouraged by research from authorities like the Kauffman Foundation, the largest foundation dedicated to monitoring entrepreneurship. They reported that 2009 had the great number of starts, even exceeded the peak 1999-2000 tech boom.

Now couple that with surveys I’ve seen where the majority of high school students want to have their business instead of getting a job. Plus, mix that in with the social entrepreneurship and “conscious capitalism” I see in many young entrepreneurs ideas and you have an amazing combination.

It’s clear to see entrepreneurship is on the rise but sadly, there’s very little real-world education aspiring business owners would get in school to help guide them.

One of the core DNA’s of my group of Maverick companies is to be that RIPPLE. And what bigger ripple can we create than with the young entrepreneurs. Personally, I get fired up and excited hearing and working with startups.

So if you’re with me, I need some help. In the comments I’d love to hear your thoughts on a few things…

Q: The Name. So first thing first. What do you think of the name? The Maverick1Million name is a reference to the big goal of a 1,000,000 start ups. But we’ve also registered a few other options:

[poll id="3"]

Q: The Platform. After building a much more complicated version in the first version of Maverick1Million.org I want to create something lean and simple to start with. I’m strongly leaning towards the Word Press platform with a host of plugins that should be able to handle a lot of the functionality I want. If you want to dig deep – here’s a mindmap included the sections and plugins I’ve researched. (The #2 in blue means it would a phase II item.)

I don’t know if WP will be the ideal platform to handle the large volume I’d like to grow the site to – but I’m of the opinion that when we get to that point the site/platform will look different and the needs of the users won’t be the same anywhere anyway. I’d rather get something out quick and see what parts are used and what members say they want more of.

Q: What should be included/deleted/featured? The NFTE students really liked the main parts of the site we had outlined. They also thought there should be some sort of way of incorporating the Maverick Business Adventures into an optional experience for the young entrepreneurs so we would consider using a Meetup.com API for that.

But what do you think?

What are the most important elements to be featured? What should be deleted and/or added? If you were 13-23, what would be the most helpful to start your own entrepreneurial venture inside this platform?

Q: How do you track the success of the young entrepreneurs start-ups? One of the biggest parts of this I struggle with is how would you track and measure the success? To me, if a young entrepreneur made $1from the material – I think they’d count towards the goal.

The working idea would be to have a separate spot these members can post their success and perhaps it’s incentivized by a sponsor. (i.e. prove you made your first $1 and you’ll get a free domain from GoDaddy.) But I’m sure there are better ways. Thoughts? Ideas?

And finally…

Call For Volunteers:

Quite frankly I don’t know exactly who we need or what kind of talents. I’m certainly thinking someone well versed in Word Press and membership sites and cool user interface would be a great start from the tech side! If you are inspired and excited about young entrepreneurship and want to be part of building Maverick1Million.org (or whatever its going to be called) I’d love to hear from you. Just drop me a note at teammaverick1million@gmail.com with your name and what skills/talents you bring to the table. Even if its I’m willing to promote the hell out of this thing – I’ll take it!

And please let me know what you think in the comments and drop me a note if you want to help out. I’ll continue posting on the blog the progress and updates.

]]>http://www.internetlifestyle.com/blog/philanthropy/maverick1million/feed/26Startup Weekendhttp://www.internetlifestyle.com/blog/start-up/startup-weekend/
http://www.internetlifestyle.com/blog/start-up/startup-weekend/#commentsWed, 20 Apr 2011 15:56:53 +0000http://www.internetlifestyle.com/blog/?p=1458This past weekend in Baltimore, I attended part of the Baltimore Startup Weekend. It was really cool! Once I heard the concept – I’ve wanted to check it out and since my brother, Adam, was going to be part of it that was good enough for me.

Here’s the deal…

You put together about 100 ambitious and aspiring entrepreneurs with a mixture of tech and non-tech skills. Then have them pitch their ideas for 60-seconds each on Friday night with the 20 best ideas, as voted on by the group, get selected to be developed. Everyone divides up into teams based on the idea they were most excited by and then the fun begins. The teams have 54 hours to create the project and get something working by Sunday night. On Sunday they pitch their idea to a group of judges for cash and prizes.

I love it!

To me, the thing that makes this work is the hard deadline. They all know they’ve got until Sunday night to have something working to show the judges or else they get zilch. That hard deadline is part of the magic and something we can all add into our lives. (See a previous post I made about “tricking” yourself into action.)

I was up there helping out the different teams as a roving mentor or coach. I’d pop my head into the different groups and ask what they were working on and how I could help. I brought an element of actual marketplace knowledge from taking 8 different products and ideas from startup to seven figures+. Some of my typical questions were around:

“What problem does this address?”

“Does this problem mean people will pay for the solution?”

“What is your revenue model here?”

It was an cool mix of projects. Some were pretty blatant iterations of companies that were hot at this moment (i.e. Groupon). Some were pretty original and solved unique problems. It was also interesting to see the mentality of some of the teams. Many were focused on the unique technology and building something without even verifying if there was a marketplace willing to pay for their solution.

I wasn’t able to make it to the judging on the Sunday but it was great to see the Twitter stream with the hashtag #BaltSW active with the results and updates from the weekend. It was very smart that the organizers gave you a tshirt with the hashtab on the arm of the t-shirt. (I’m actually wearing mine as I type this.)

I was keeping track of the winners through the hashtag and I’m happy to report my brother’s team actually won the top prize. Their idea is “Parking Panda” which is a real-time location parking tool for events and crowded downtown areas. So it matches together private driveway owners with people that are frustrated with not being able to find a parking spot or who want to pay less than a garage. It’s really cool and can’t wait for them to roll it out in Baltimore.

You can see a raw video of Adam’s winning pitch here:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8bHkXxvKB4&feature=player_embedded

It was great to see the startup spirit come together for one long red bull powered weekend. And it was awesome to have the Baltimore Sun there covering some of the action with not one – but 2 different articles. It’s events like this that get me fired up with the entrepreneurial notion of starting from scratch and building something in just one weekend. If you get the chance – I’d recommend checking out a Startup Weekend.

]]>http://www.internetlifestyle.com/blog/start-up/startup-weekend/feed/6Authentic Altruism or ‘Quick-dry’ Charity Make-Over?http://www.internetlifestyle.com/blog/philanthropy/authentic-altruism-quickdry-charity-makeover/
http://www.internetlifestyle.com/blog/philanthropy/authentic-altruism-quickdry-charity-makeover/#commentsMon, 28 Mar 2011 02:54:29 +0000http://www.internetlifestyle.com/blog/?p=1448It’s been incredible to see so many new companies and products adding charitable components to what they’re doing or even go all the way and back that into their ‘DNA’ as a socially conscious but still capitalistic company. I love it!

Sometimes though you wonder if companies might be doing this just for the PR value and not really for authentic reasons that resonate with their brand, their customers or the owners. For instance, I recently came across a campaign for Kentucky Fried Chicken to donate 50 cents for every pink bucket of chicken they sell.

Hmmm….

While I’m all for breast cancer research and help (my Mom died from breast and ovarian cancer) but I don’t see the connection. And I’m not the only one I’ve seen some snarky blog posts about how KFC is trying to use this do-good campaign to gloss over the fact fried chicken could lead to obesity and heart disease. It just doesn’t fit the KFC brand and I cannot see customers really getting behind this in a genuine way. Plus, there already seeing some negative backlash for their “good corporate deed”.

If you’re going to use your business to promote or support a cause there should be a personal reason. Case in point, a recent rose wine I just had produced by former Olympian Peggy Fleming is called “Victories“. Peggy went through a fight with breast cancer and now for every bottle purchased a significant portion goes to breast cancer causes. I like the way this is authentic plus it really ties into the product itself, a rose, since pink has become the color for breast cancer awareness.

Here’s another interesting example that fits the product personality -Elivse and Kreese make high-end luxury goods out of discarded fire hose and other recycled material. Yup I said fire hose!

They’ve also used waste coffee sacks, scrap sail cloth, used air traffic control flight strips, parachute silk and all sorts of other industrial waste. They donate 50% of their profits back to Firehouse Brigade charities and that fits perfectly with their brand and actual product. It’s a beautiful congruent element that once again gets customers talking.

Personally, I’ve incorporated my adventurous personality many different fundraisers including one for Virgin Unite. Me and my buddies, Mike Filsaime and Rob Olic, joined up to do a “Fall-a-Thon” where our goal was to raise $1 per every foot we fell out of the sky. (Oh…did I mention it was from 30,000 feet – the cruising altitude of a jet?)

So the big questions to ask yourself are:

What causes matters to you and to your customers?

What is the personality of my product, service or company?

How does what we do help create zealots to spread our message.

I’d love to hear about different impactful tie-ins you’ve seen that have worked or those that didn’t. Leave a comment and keep the conversation going.

Last Summer we held our 2nd annual Maverick Business Insider Summer Extravaganza event for Maverick1000 members and Maverick Business Insider newsletter subscribers. This 1-day event covered the maverick philosophy of make more, have more fun and give more. (If you weren’t there – you missed out!!)

We started off the day with the workshops and a presentation I gave on “3 Pillars of an Extraordinary Entrepreneurial Life & Business” and the newest trends for 2010 online & beyond. Then a highlight of our “hard work” was throwing paper airplanes around for the “Airtime Mastermind”.

Here’s a picture that captures it well -

Air Time Mastermind in full flight

Everyone got a piece of construction paper to write down their most pressing issue or problem in business. Then they folded up their plane and launched them around the room. Everyone had to grab someone else’s plane and write down an answer to their question. We got some great conversation going and insights to problems attendees faced. (In fact, this ‘game’ is so cool that we developed at Maverick – we posted it on the GameStorming book’s blog – http://www.gogamestorm.com/?p=291)

Then after filling up on a summer BBQ lunch, we headed out for Airsoft close quarter combat facility. Now in case you haven’t seen Airsoft or heard of it – it’s billed as similar to paintball…WITH all the fun, but WITHOUT the pain. (Umm….no!) Those damn pellets hurt for sure.

At the Airsoft facility, suiting up for the games with Mavericks Dr. Adam Summers, Mike Cline and William Lee. Notice William (who we affectionately referred to as Rambo). When they asked if anyone had played before, he didn’t say anything. He chose instead to go for Shock & Awe when he started suiting up. Vests, extra magazines, a backup handheld gun (with flashlight), an automatic primary weapon (with flashlight AND silencer), ninja mask and more. The room got a little quiet as his violent side started to show.

Did someone call for S.W.A.T.? (William is just practicing for the Maverick Covert Ops experience in October.)

Now for the Giving part – we had a “Charity Chicken”. What the hell is a charity chicken you may ask? That’s a perfectly valid question and one we’re not exactly sure the answer to either. But for some reason myself and Chris Zavadowski both got into the suit to bother people inside the playing field until we were shot. (Trust me, even with the damn suit on you still felt the bullets.) Anyone who shot the chicken would donate $10 to Village Enterprise Fund, one of the self-sustaining charities Maverick consistently supports. Here’s an action shot of the “Charity Chicken”:

The Charity Chicken also lays eggs during the game (good for bonus points and special powers). Chris decided he should get some practice beforehand… ;)

The #1 player, and winner of a $500 charity donation in his name (2nd place got $250 and 3rd place got $100 — they both chose American Cancer Society, and William chose the Dizzy Feet Foundation), why not pour some beer into your trophy? At least, it looked like a good idea. ;)

To determine the trophy winners (and winners of the charity donation prizes), we held a special sudden death match at the end of the day with the top guns. 1st place went to Maverick Global Intrepid member, William Lee (“Rambo”). 2nd place was snatched up by David Dolak and 3rd place went to Jared Polin.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a Maverick event without a few other fun awards. Rakhi Sharma won the “Lost Cause” award for her er, um….skills. And Maverick Member, Adam Summers, snatched up the MVP trophy for his awesome teamwork covering his buddies’ asses.

Here are all the awesome Members who stepped up to shoot the poor chicken (i.e. Chris and me) and donate to charity:

And our most coveted prize went to Maverick1000 member, Gary Nealon. He was given the award for Big Mother Clucker for hitting the defenseless chicken the most out of anyone and making the biggest charity donation. (Thanks Gary!)

And if you think your Maverick members would let the chicken cluck off into the sunset – you’ve got another thing coming. The next day a fearless group of Mavericks took to the air for a skydiving adventure. Many of the members experienced their first freefall and the chicken went along for the ride too.

Let’s be honest, nothing says classy like a chicken hat.

Maverick members with limited edition ‘Carpe Diem Bitch’ t-shirts and one chicken head are ready to jump.

Now at the jump site, I’m sure they’ve seen some wacky things – but I suggested that maybe we could get the Chicken up in the air. After asking if I was kidding or not, they checked in with my instructor…and he gave a very hesitant, “Okay”. He cut off the chicken wings so we weren’t working with a ‘squirrel suit’ and then checked me out in the harness.

I look forward to hanging out with you at the next Maverick Business Insider Extravaganza! (But you have to be a Maverick Business Insider to attend. Check out http://www.MaverickBusinessInsiders.com for a special free package I’ve put together for you!